Online advertising often depends on cooperation between advertisers who create advertisements and providers who display the advertisements to end users. However, providers of online advertising typically have very low security requirements or control over the content created by advertisers. Due to lax controls, advertisements may contain various types of malware that are not detected by providers. Whether intentional or not, these forms of malicious advertising, or “malvertising,” can be harmful to end users.
In some cases, malvertising can cause malware to infect computing devices after a user performs an action, such as clicking on an advertisement. In other cases, user interaction may not be necessary for malware to infect computing devices. For example, malware may install itself on a computing device simply through the display of an advertisement on vulnerable browsers or through other vulnerable software. Traditionally, security measures have attempted to detect such malware after an advertisement displays on the computing device or to remove the malware after it has infected the computing device. However, in the cases where malvertising does not require user interaction, traditional security measures may not be able to detect malware or to prevent infection of the device. Accordingly, the instant disclosure identifies and addresses a need for additional and improved systems and methods for preventing the execution of online malvertising.